Tag Archives: Lazarus

TRUST HIS HEART

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TRUST HIS HEART

“Now a man named Lazarus was sick. He was from Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. (This Mary, whose brother Lazarus now lay sick, was the same one who poured perfume on the Lord and wiped His feet with her hair). So the sisters sent word to Jesus, ‘Lord, the one you love is sick.’ When He heard this, Jesus said, ‘This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God’s glory so that God’s Son may also be glorified through it.'” John 11:1-4 NIV.

Jesus was faced with something He had never experienced before. Lazarus was no stranger to Him. He was a member of a family whose home was like a second home to Him. In the past few weeks He had spent much time there, using it as a refuge from His adversaries as He moved in and out of Jerusalem before His final Passover.

There was a strong bond between this family and Jesus. Mary had expressed her faith and adoration by anointing His feet with her costliest treasure — her alabaster box of spikenard, worth an entire year’s wages in Jewish terms. Jesus must have felt comfortable in their home. He knew He was always welcome and He was always provided for when He stayed there with His disciples.

His miracles had always been done to strangers or casual acquaintances at the most, but now His beloved friend, Lazarus lay deathly sick. His illness must have been much more than a common cold since the sisters felt the need to send for Him. Jesus’ response shows us that Lazarus was dying. What was He to do? His natural response would have been to set off immediately so that He could get to him before he died.

Yet Jesus said and did something unusual. Instead of leaving for Bethany right then, He remarked to His disciples, ‘Lazarus won’t die. This is about God’s glory and mine as well.’ What did He mean? Once again, Jesus put this crisis into perspective. What appeared obvious in the circumstances was part of a much bigger picture – God’s glory – and it was Jesus’ role to act within what God was doing, not what would have been His natural inclination.

Every situation, even if it touched someone as dear to Him as Lazarus and his sisters, was no cause for panic. He had to see it from His Father’s point of view and act within the Father’s will. There was always one guiding principle that showed Jesus what to do – whatever brought the greatest glory to the Father.

When He and His disciples met a man born blind, He used it as an opportunity to reveal the Father’s mercy by restoring His sight as a sign, especially to His opponents, that it was the Father’s desire for people to have 20/20 spiritual vision by believing in Him. The miracle triggered a debate that exposed the blindness of the Jewish leaders who vehemently defended their claim that they could “see”.

Jesus was now faced with the greatest challenge and the greatest opportunity of His ministry. He had raised others from the dead, not recorded by John but by the other gospel writers, but never a person whose body had already been decaying for four days.

His disciples must have been puzzled by His attitude. He seemed quite casual about the sisters’ urgent message. First, He seemed confident that Lazarus would not die; then He made no effort to hurry to his bedside. What was going on?

“Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So, when He heard that Lazarus was sick, He stayed where He was two more days, and then He said to His disciples, ‘Let us go back to Judea.'” John 11:5-7 NIV.

Isn’t that a strange way to show His love?  Are we not also faced with the same strange response from God? We cry out to Him in our crisis and He says nothing and He does nothing! It is almost as though He deliberately turns a deaf ear. What is He doing?

God is never deaf to the cries of His beloved but, like Jesus, He sees the bigger picture. There was a great lesson for the two sisters in Jesus’ action as well as revelation of who He was that impacted them and their brother far more powerfully than healing Lazarus would have done.

He is calling us to trust Him; to trust His love, His power and His intention which is much bigger than anything we can imagine.

Acknowledgement

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

THE GOSPEL PF LUKE – THERE WAS ONCE A RICH MAN

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THERE WAS ONCE A RICH MAN

“‘There was once a rich man, expensively dressed….wasting his days in conspicuous consumption….A poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, had been dumped on his doorstep. All he lived on was…scraps off the rich man’s table…Then he died, this poor man….The rich man also died….In hell and in torment, he looked up….He called out…”Send Lazarus…”…But Abraham said, ‘Child, remember…'” Luke 16:19-31.

A familiar story to Bible-readers, but what is the point of this parable? Hebrews read for identification. Who am I in the story? How often Jesus directed His stories at the Pharisees as a wake-up call! If God’s word is a seed, then Jesus sowed lavishly into the ears of the religious leaders, but to no avail.

This is quite a shocking story for several reasons:

Firstly, it uncovers the heart of this rich man. Jesus had no issues with his being rich. In fact, the Apostle Paul stated categorically that Jesus Himself was rich. “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus that, though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, so that you through His poverty might become rich.” 2 Corinthians 8:9 (NIV). He had issues with what the rich man did with his riches.

In this case, he spent it all on himself, not just on his needs, but on a sumptuous and lavish lifestyle that made him blind to the need of the poor man at his gate, a simple but graphic description of what was known as the ‘yetzer harah’ – the evil eye or the eye of darkness – the inward-looking eye that sees no-one but self.

Secondly, Jesus shows us the destiny of greedy and selfish people. Hell is not about God getting people back for not listening to Him. It’s a consequence of a life squandered on self instead of fulfilling God’s higher purpose. The Valley of Hinnom (Gehenna- translated “hell”) was the garbage dump of the city where worthless stuff was burnt – a terrible tragedy and sorrow for the God who gave us the freedom to choose, knowing that that freedom could cost us our eternal destiny.

Thirdly, it smashed into the Hebrew philosophy that wealth was equal to God’s blessing and poverty a curse on people who were out of favour with God. How could this rich man land up in hell if his wealth was a token of God’s favour? This must have shocked both the Pharisees and the disciples. On one occasion, a rich man came to Jesus to ask what he needed to do to have the assurance of eternal life. Jesus told him to get rid of his wealth because it stood between him and following Him. The young man refused.

Jesus’ comment puzzled His disciples. ‘How difficult it is,’ He said, ‘for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.’ The disciples blurted out, ‘Who, then, can be saved?’ That was a shock to them. If rich people, who were supposed to be the blessed ones, could not enter the kingdom, what hope was there for the rest?

Jesus’s story reveals something much deeper than wealth=blessing=salvation. It was not having wealth but what you did with it that revealed your heart. Wealth is a good servant but a terrible master. What we do with is it the measure of our love for God.

Fourthly, not even torment in hell changed the heart of this man. O yes, he thought about his brothers but only because he did not want them to experience the terrible end of a worthless life, which presupposed that they were living just as he had lived. But his attitude to the poor man had not changed. He still regarded him as less than himself. ‘Send Lazarus,’ he instructed Abraham, as though Lazarus were his servant to dispatch as he chose.

Jesus was not, for one moment, advocating good works as a way of salvation. His blood alone can forgive the guilt of our sin and cleanse us from all our unrighteousness, but He presupposed that our hearts will also be transformed so that we do not continue living self-indulgent lives. Generosity is a sign that our hearts and lives have been changed, If not, we need to re-evaluate so that we do not land up where the rich man did because he assumed…

Transformed – By Death

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TRANSFORMED – BY DEATH 

“Six days before the Passover, Jesus came to Bethany, where Lazarus lived, whom Jesus had raised from the dead. Here a dinner was given in Jesus’ honour. Martha served while Lazarus was among those reclining at the table with Him.” John 12:1, 2a NIV.

I find it strange that, for the first time the name of Lazarus, Martha and Mary’s brother was mentioned apart from his sickness and death in John 11. Although Jesus visited their home in Bethany many times, Lazarus did not feature until after he was raised from the dead. There is no indication that the two sisters even had a brother until now.

Is it possible that Lazarus was unsympathetic, even hostile to Jesus before he died? The sisters called him, “The one whom you love,” but that does not mean than he had any sort of relationship with Jesus. Jesus loved the rich young ruler and yet he chose not to follow Him and walked away.

Did Jesus allow Lazarus to die so that he could go to the grave an unbeliever; to awaken him to the truth that there is an afterlife and that there is only one way to the Father, after all, and that is through Jesus?

For the first time, at the dinner given in Jesus’ honour in his home, Lazarus was among those reclining at the table. John makes sure that his readers understand that it was in Jesus’ honour, not Lazarus’, that Martha arranged this function. The fact that Lazarus was one of the dinner guests meant that Jesus and he were reconciled. Did he refuse to eat with Jesus until now because he did not believe in Him?

Although this is conjecture, if it is the truth, Jesus might deliberately have allowed Lazarus to experience death and then bring him back to life again so that he would know what it was like to be separated from God and then be given another opportunity to believe in Jesus.

“…with Him.” Is that a loaded statement? It almost sounds as though John wanted to emphasize Lazarus’ new intimacy with Jesus. Jesus would have occupied the place of honour at the table, but where was Lazarus seated? “With Him,” right beside Him; perhaps reclining on Him as John had done at the Passover meal.

I think it was more than gratitude that brought Lazarus to faith in Jesus. He was probably one of those men who was too proud or too stubborn to acknowledge that he was wrong. He needed a wake-up call (pardon the pun) far stronger than the teaching, or even the healing miracles of Jesus. Was he one like Thomas who demanded to poke his finger into Jesus’ wounds before he would believe?

Whatever Lazarus needed to shake him out of his unbelief, Jesus met him and he became a convinced and devoted follower. He had tasted death and returned. The Pharisees could argue that the man born blind was not blind or not healed or whatever else they wanted to believe but they could never argue away the truth that Lazarus was decaying in the tomb and Jesus called him back to life.

“Then Mary took about a pint of pure nard, an expensive perfume; she poured it on Jesus’ feet and wiped His feet with her hair. And the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.” John 12:3 NIV.

This verse completes the picture and gives one a feeling of satisfaction. Each member of the Bethany family is in his or her place; Martha in the kitchen, serving; Lazarus at Jesus’ side, reclining; and Mary at Jesus’ feet, adoring; each one worshipping Jesus in the appropriate way! Finally, Lazarus has come home. He has become a member of God’s family and has taken his rightful place in his human family.

It was a long and difficult road for him. He had to endure the suffering of his mortality to gain an understanding of his immortality. In His love for Lazarus, Jesus allowed him to walk right into physical and spiritual death to feel the magnitude of God’s grace and to receive the gift of everlasting life that was wrapped up in His own death and resurrection. In the course of a few days Jesus would be where Lazarus had been so that Lazarus could be where He was.

He did that for him and for us too…!

The Jews

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THE JEWS

“When the Jews who had been with Mary in the house, comforting her, noticed how quickly she got up and went out, they followed her, supposing she was going to the tomb to mourn there…

“When Jesus saw her weeping and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, He was deeply moved in spirit and troubled. ‘Where have you laid him,’ He asked. ‘Come and see, Lord,’ they replied. Jesus wept.

“Then the Jews said, ‘See how He loved him!’ But some of them said, ‘Could not He who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?'” John 11:31;33-37 NIV.

Once again the Jews are in the mix! John has consistently called Jesus’ opponents “the Jews”. Are these ones here with Martha and Mary the same people — the ones who were planning to kill Him?

Is it possible that He was using this situation as His trump card against them? In His altercations with them He had insisted that they see His works as His calling card. ‘Who are you?’ they demanded, time and again. His response was always the same. ‘Look at my works and decide for yourself. Whom do I resemble?’ In their perversity they responded, ‘You look like the devil. Demon-possessed! You’re the son of Satan!’

‘Funny!’ He replied, ‘You are remarkably like your father, the devil! Your works look just like him — thief, liar, murderer!’ In spite of their protestations, ‘We are Abraham’s descendants; we are disciples of Moses; we are God’s sons,’ there was an unmistakable likeness to their real father and they hated Jesus for pointing it out.

Now they were in Bethany with the sisters, milling around, observing, even mourning a little with them. Give them their due; perhaps their grief over the death of Lazarus was genuine — or was it also part of their practised religion, sitting shiva with those who mourn?

How was Jesus ever to convince them that He was the Father’s Son, showing them what the Father was like by the works He did? Miracles didn’t do it — they assassinated His character because He broke THEIR rules by healing on the Sabbath. Perhaps raising a man to life who had been decaying in the tomb for four days might do it.

And what about the two bereaved sisters? It was time to take their faith to a new level, especially since He would soon be where Lazarus was, although they didn’t know it yet. What would happen to their confidence in Him when His battered body lay in the tomb and their shattered hopes with Him? Would they recall His words, ‘I AM the resurrection and the life?’ Would their memory of Lazarus keep their faith in Him alive?

Jesus knew exactly what He was doing! This miracle of all miracles would either convince the Jews or drive another nail into their coffin — and His! Did they really want to know who He was or were they looking for another excuse to kill Him? When He called Lazarus from the grave, it was His way of saying, ‘Take that, you Jews!’ and their response. ‘Kill Lazarus! Get him out the way! He’s the reason for all this!’

And Martha and Mary? Time would tell whether this event would forever cement their trust in Him and  bind them to Him in adoring love forever. And Lazarus? What would this experience do for him? After all, he was the one who had crossed the great divide and come back again? We never hear the story from his lips, but we have hints in John’s record that help us make up a story that could well fit the evidence.

How true it is that God always had a reason and a plan for everything He does. Life is lived forward and understood backwards. Our hearts break for the sisters in their grief and disappointed hopes and celebrate with them in their joy when they received their brother back alive. We suffer in our own anguish and pain but, when we trust Him, somehow we receive back in abundance more than we ever lost — and the ecstasy of knowing, after all, that He knew what He was doing!

The Final Showdown

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THE FINAL SHOWDOWN 

“‘But Rabbi,’ they said, ‘a short while ago the Jews there tried to stone you, and yet you are going back?’ Jesus answered, ‘Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Anyone who walks in the daytime will not stumble, for they see by this world’s light. It is when a person walks at night that they stumble, for they have no light.'” John 11:8-10 NIV

Once again the disciples were mystified by Jesus’ behaviour. He was not acting like someone who had the power to heal His ailing friend. Knowing he was dying, He dawdled for another two days. Perhaps His disciples thought He was deliberately staying away because the Jews had tried to kill Him.

Then, after two days, He decided to go back to Bethany after all. It seems that He was at least two days journey on foot away from Lazarus and his sisters. Four days delay could mean anything. What was the point of returning if it was too late?

Jesus’ reply is also puzzling. He was going right into the lion’s den, yet He seemed unconcerned. Once again He showed His followers that His life was directed, not by His circumstances but by His Father’s timetable. If He was needed in Bethany, He would go there regardless of what His enemies were planning to do. His times were in His Father’s hands; it was up to Him, as a Son, to obey.

“After this He went on to tell them, ‘Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going to wake him up.’ His disciples replied, ‘Lord, if he sleeps, he will get better.’ Jesus had been speaking of his death, but His disciples thought He meant natural sleep. So then He told them plainly, ‘Lazarus is dead, and for your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to to him.’

“Then Thomas (also known as Didymus) said to the rest of the disciples, ‘ Let us also go, that we may die with Him.'” John 11:11-16 NIV.

He seemed fully aware and completely in control of what He was doing. His delay was deliberate, giving Lazarus time to go the full course of his illness right up to his death and beyond. Imagine what that did to the two sisters who trusted Jesus and were anxiously waiting for Him to come! Day after day they watched out for Him but He did not arrive. Lazarus was sinking and they were desperate. Did He not get the message? Did He not care? Why had He not come?

Lazarus finally died and He still did not arrive — not even for the funeral. Four days went by — Lazarus’ body had begun to decay and still no Jesus. The sisters were disillusioned and distraught. Had He finally failed; finally betrayed their trust in Him? What were they to think? They had no idea what was happening on the other side of the Jordan.

From Jesus’ point of view it was all going to plan. He even hinted to His disciples that He knew exactly what was happening. Lazarus had died. It was now time to go back to Bethany. His disciples were mystified. Why go back if Lazarus was dead? Wasn’t it too dangerous to put in an appearance when the Jews were crying for His blood?

That was no concern of Jesus because He knew when it would be time to put Himself into their hands. They had no power to touch Him until the Father delivered Him up to them. Time and again people had tried to harm Him — from the time He made Himself known to His own people in Nazareth to His altercations with the Jews in Jerusalem He was the target for hatred and murder, yet every time He emerged unscathed. He went about freely among His enemies because He trusted the Father.

He had His eyes on a miracle bigger than He had ever performed and a sign no-one could deny — that He was resurrection life that promised life to those who believed in him far greater than they could ever imagine. Raising a decaying man to life four days after he died was an unimaginable “work” that not even His enemies could deny. The tried to deny the blind man’s restored sight but a dead and rotting corpse brought back to life! Never!

No wonder He seized the opportunity to do something beyond anything people could imagine and especially His avowed adversaries. This was the power of the Father whom He came to reveal and the display of His own glory through the glory of the Father.